Modern commercial transport aircraft are typically driven by two or more high bypass ratio turbofan engines. These engines include a fan that provides a significant fraction of the overall propulsion system thrust. An engine core drives the fan as well as one or more compressors, and produces additional thrust by directing exhaust products in an aft direction.
In addition to providing thrust to propel the aircraft, and powering the aircraft hydraulic and pneumatic systems, the turbofan engines provide electrical power to many aircraft components, including the environmental control system, aircraft computers, hydraulic motor pumps, and/or other motors and electrical devices. One approach to obtaining electrical power from the aircraft engines is to convert the rotational motion of the turbomachinery components to electrical power. While this approach has been generally effective, the manner in which the power is extracted from the engines is not always efficient. This in turn can create additional inefficiencies as automated aircraft systems and/or crew compensate or overcompensate for an initially inefficient power extraction. Accordingly, there remains a need for more efficient techniques for extracting electrical power from aircraft turbofan engines.